[splat-uhs-FEER-ik] adj. The kind of rebound that doesn't go exactly as planned.

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Sunday, December 2, 2012

Sweating the small stuff

My family and I are getting our
Christmas trees today. For some people, the process consists of driving a couple
miles and braving the wilds of the parking lot at Home Depot. For us, it’s an expedition.

We trek to the Virginia
countryside and spend hours wandering its rolling hills, combing acres of spruces,
firs and pines in search of perfect specimens. The Yanks apply more care and
scrutiny to the process of cutting down a Christmas tree than we do preparing
our tax returns.

Last year I didn’t pick out a
tree of my own because I was living with my sister and her family. In 2012 I’ve got a house and am excited about
getting and decorating my own tree. My
collection of ornaments had lived in a box for two years, seeing daylight only
briefly last year when it became an unexpected source of controversy during my and Mark’s divorce.

I understood that, when the
decision to divorce isn’t made jointly, arguments can arise about anything,
including who gets the rights to specific oxygen molecules. But since Mark and I had a very
large fish to fry—unloading the enormous house we’d built, through the For Sale
By Owner process no less—I was surprised to find myself caught up in a melee over
holiday tchotchkes one Saturday last November.

I’d spent the day at the Yuppie
Prison getting estimates from contractors on the few items the prospective
buyers required us to fix before the sale.
As one of those contractors talked me through his plans to bridge a gap in
the seal between the custom mahogany front doors, I phoned Mark so he could hear the contractor’s
plan and consent to having the work done.
He didn’t answer so I left a message.

Seconds after leaving the voice
mail, an email from him appeared on my Blackberry. The note didn’t relate to the door, or the
pile of paperwork I’d put together for the house sale, or my request to meet to
review the documents in light of our lack of real estate credentials.

The email was about… Christmas
ornaments. He asserted that I’d intentionally taken them when I moved out and
he wanted to meet to claim his share.

A person of average intellect
would grasp the transactional significance of the Christmas ornaments and agree
that they warranted a separate meeting whereas the imminent sale of our home did
not; however, since my intellect was sub-par—Mark had pointed this out more
than once over the course of the divorce—I was able to vault right past his
common sense approach and suggest that we meet first about the house.

After several rounds of discussion,
he agreed, perhaps because he recognized that sometimes you have to compromise
on minor stuff before you can get to the big-ticket items.

That Mark even thought about
Christmas ornaments, much less cared
about them, surprised me. He claimed not
to want any reminders of me and hadn’t owned any holiday trinkets before he met
me (he didn’t bother with a tree during his single days). The baubles that adorned our joint trees were
pretty much all mine. Friends and family
had given them to me, with a very large influx in 2003 courtesy of a intervention
two of my friends staged when they saw my first tree.

“Oh, honey, that is the saddest
thing we’ve ever seen,” they’d said, sizing up its unintentionally minimalist style. They couldn’t bear to let me persist in a
state of decorative famine, and they still feed me to this day.

It was true that Mark and I had
picked up some solid colored balls and a dozen or so other ornaments at after-Christmas
sales, along with a tree-topping angel.

Unbeknownst to me, it was also
true that I had the contraband. The items were packed in a large
plastic bin that I hadn’t opened since moving, thinking it housed only my
Christmas stuff. I had no sentimental attachment to the jointly
acquired ornaments and most were not exactly my taste, by which I mean I’d have
thought twice before donating them to a foundation for the blind. (The angel, in particular, had a face that
could’ve ruled the nightmare kingdom every bit as effectively as the clown from
Poltergeist.)

I had no qualms whatsoever about
giving up that stuff and did so immediately. Mark wasn’t
satisfied but eventually agreed to drop the issue. Obviously, pettiness had me
in its clutches, too, or I would’ve resolved the debate immediately by giving
him all the Christmas stuff, no matter its origins. Had I been thinking clearly, I’d
have realized that the people who gave me those ornaments were what imbued them
with sentimental value. My loved ones weren’t going anywhere even if the trinkets
left me.

Still, I’d be lying if I said I’m
not excited about opening the bin this year. I can’t wait to see my little buddies
and hang them up, no strings attached.

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About Me

I turned 40 in June of 2011. Shortly thereafter I realized I needed to end my 10-month marriage. Making this decision was difficult --you don't exactly brag about being married a Kardashian length of time-- but the mechanics of executing this huge fresh start (and a whole series of related little ones) proved even more daunting. My attempts to bounce back --both recent and not--haven't always ricocheted off the proverbial wall with the gusto I envisioned. Sometimes they hit it with a resounding "splat" and slide down before landing in a heap on the dirt. This blog chronicles adventures in splats --largely mine but guest splatters will be featured as well--with the hope that the posts will evoke laughter, provoke the occasional thought, and prove that even the messiest ones usually work out just fine. Eventually.

Have You Ever Splat-ted? Tell me about it!

Have a good "splat" story to share? Email me at splatospheric@gmail.com. (Names and other incriminating details can be changed to protect the splatted, of course!) I'd like to write about other people's adventures as well as my own. While I'm vain enough to have started a blog, I have just enough self awareness to know that not everyone will find me as interesting as I do. There's simply no accounting for taste.